Many Majevicans are expatriates. They often visit their native place. Many of them invest and initiate projects there. Once retired, they often return to their old address, their patrimony.

Majevicans invest the experience gained and money earned in the diaspora in mini production facilities in their native place.

Vaso Vasić has a private company in the United Arab Emirates, and an alpine goat farm in Lipovice, not far from Lopare. He employs some ten locals, and plans a cheese factory starting from the next year.

- Your 300 or 350 goats give you another 150 female kids the following year. Our plan is practically to gift to the people willing to operate as mini-farms selling us the milk, so that we might be perhaps the biggest goat cheese producers in BiH - says Vasić.

Since 2010, the Association of Majevicans in Switzerland has been implementing various projects. According to them, this well-organized country is their current home, but their heart is in the Republic of Srpska and on the slopes of Majevica.

- They have two or three companies each here, while also working in Switzerland. All they produce is assembled here - said Ilija Jović, vice president of the Association of Majevicans in Switzerland.

- We are grateful to Switzerland, which has taken in a large number of our people, but simply we all try to come here to invest, to develop - added Vasilije Obrenović.

Labor force has been migrating from this area to the wide world for more than half a century. During that time, according to them, at least 26,000 people have left for foreign countries and returned.

Source and photo: RTRS